pierppasolini:

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) // dir. Lee Harry

Jesus, this was from a Silent Night, Deadly Night sequel?

The original was from 1984 (so the slasher genre was out of infancy but still in childhood: Friday the XIII was up to 4 but Nightmare on Elm Street was just starting, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was still just the ‘74 original, on the holiday-themed tip Halloween III came out in '82) and was like “what if we don’t have sick kills or even that much suspense or plot but just explicitly turn the weird psychosexual issues up to 11”

It’s about this guy who works in a big store being dragooned into taking over when their store Santa calls out… except years earlier as a kid he saw his parents killed (and raped!) by a criminal dressed as Santa, the night after his demented grandfather tells him to fear Santa Claus, and then gets sent to an orphanage run by a beat-the-sexuality-out-of-them nun, so he snaps and goes around killing people who have sex (and also the bosses who exploit him? I told you the psychosexual issues were weird)

Like the fake ending isn’t “we thought we stopped him…. but he’s still alive!” It’s “we know he’s coming for the final confrontation with that nun, so we shot him dead! But that was just some kindly old man dressed as Santa to bring presents for the orphans!”

Also, it’s set in Utah, and the Catholics are not the weird sexual hangups religion I associate with there!